Sep 19th, 2011
Plagiarism
What is plagiarism? Plagiarism is not only copy the writing of another person it is more than that. Its etymology is the perfect example. Indeed, “plagiarism” comes from Latin language “plagiarius” that means “kidnapper, seducer, plunderer”. It is extremely strong. Actually, we can define the plagiarism as a kind of robbery. Everything can be own: houses, jewelries, even ideas; they are all protected by the law and especially the intangible things like ideas or articles are protected by the intellectual property. That wants to say that nobody can copy a paragraph or a sentence without the author’s authorization or without saying it is a quotation.
Nowadays, more and more students plagiarize because it is easier than 10 years before. Indeed, with the fast growing of Internet, students access to a lot of writing databases: blogs, former student’s essays, newspaper’s articles… It is so easy to copy it: select it, right click, copy, and paste; even a child can do it.
Nevertheless, in France, for about five years, universities have special computer software that check if the student’s essays are writing thanks to plagiarism. It compares the sentence, recognizes worlds, and calculates the percentage of similarity. If the percentage is too high, the student can be in trouble. Indeed, French universities want to make the students reflect, they want to students create new things, and think by themselves. The plagiarism is the opposite of the French universities’ goal. Thus, it is highly punish. In general the essay is throw and the student has to write a new one.